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Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Awkward American Portraits

The artwork here has been quite Euro-centric, so I decided
it was time to look at some good old-fashioned American art.Recently Amy over at Kid-Free Living (who is
hilarious and you should go read her blog!) found some gems at the National Gallery in DC, which pointed me in the direction of their
website. A vast trove of materials awaited!The 19th century
seems to have been a golden age for awkward portraiture.

The 19th century was a period before closets were
invented, so women were forced to wear all of their clothes stuffed into their
sleeves and tied under their skirts.Unused lace curtains were turned into attractive head and shoulder
coverings.

Interior Scene - 1840

At this time, people had hands and feet a fraction of the
size that they do today. Books were
made in miniature to accommodate tiny fingers.Also, perspective did not exist yet.

Girl with Reticule and Rose – Joseph Whiting Stock, 1840

Terribly awkward haircuts for children did exist, however,
along with the child’s resultant seething being immortalized in paint.

Mary and Francis Wilcox – Joseph Whiting Stock, 1845

“Please can we go now, Mummy?Little Francis Green-Dress wants to take her dollhouse sledding
and teach me how to hover an inch off the ground like she does.”

Eliza Welch Stone – Thomas Skynner, 1845

I assume Eliza divided her free time between flower
arranging to maintain a veneer of femininity, and being a linebacker. She needed to be careful about getting her portrait done when her five o'clock shadow was showing, though.

Charles H. Sisson – Joseph Goodhue Chandler, 1850

Little Charles already excelled in the art of beating the
livestock and servants by the age of five.

Plains Indian – J.W. Bradshaw, 19th century

So I imagine Mr. Bradshaw was trying to show respect in
painting the portrait of this individual.Unfortunately his face seems to be melting a bit. On the plus side, his portrait later served as inspiration for the Muppet Workshop.

I think the winner for Most Awkward American Portrait this
round, however, goes to Edward Hicks, for his “Portrait of a Child.”

The
old saying goes, those who can’t do, write snarky blog posts about those who at
least attempt to do.I confess I once
tried my hand at doing a self-portrait, with a Technicolor result that would
have made Picasso scratch his head.The
difference is that my work didn’t wind up in the National Gallery.

Indeed, all these fetishes existed, it was just harder to document and share them without the prevalence of cheap digital cameras. You had to go out and find a painter willing to take it all in, and most of them would rather spend time painting flowers or dead animals than a man in a giant pinafore.

Edward Hicks either couldn't paint hands, or...I don't want to think of an alternative. My take aways here are: they LOVED shoulder pads back in the 18-19th century, they were way into abstract art without knowing it, somebody got their hands on some peyote, and some art is not worth hanging in a museum.

Thank you for showing that American painters can be just as haunting as the Europeans, albeit without the bare breasts of their Dutch counterparts.

Wow! Freaky kids (is that "child" supposed to be a boy or a girl? We have some gender identity issues going on there) and manly women. Why in the painting with the boy with the whip does his face look realistic but everything else has a cartoon feel to it? Did the artist get tired or not know how to paint clothes? I get that hands are hard to capture, but seriously, none of them could master it! Maybe it's a European thing. That and perspective!

Hands were a new stage of evolution in American history that artists were still struggling to learn to capture. Prior to hands, everyone just had slightly tapered stumps at the end of their arms, so the widening of the hand and development of fingers baffled painters for some time.

Ye gods, those artists were either geniusii or escaped lunatics who were good with a brush.

This all pre-dates television so are we perhaps missing something? Maybe there were "channels" in artwork at the time and what you have there came from the "Comedy" and "Wildlife" oils channels? Maybe one or two from the "Horror" channel too...

There is a very fine line between "genius" and "escaped lunatic." I think that about the producers of some of the programming on modern television.

I like the idea of art channels, but you do get the risk of one person gradually buying up all the channels and gaining an art display monopoly, and then every channel suddenly becoming some variation on the theme of Sexy Clowns.

Please continue, I love weblogs like these. Have you ever noticed the Sistine Chapel segment where Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden fruit? Find a close up, there are plenty of them on internet, and imagine where Eve's mouth would have been had the Serpent not asked for her attention.Michelangelo may have been deeply religious, but he liked to tease the Church. And for 500 years, numerous kings and popes and cardinals and mother superiors and nuns have stared at the ceiling in devoting awe and never noticed...